Trouble logging in?We were forced to invalidate all account passwords. You will have to reset your password to login. If you have trouble resetting your password, please send us a message with as much helpful information as possible, such as your username and any email addresses you may have used to register. Whatever you do, please do not create a new account. That is not the right solution, and it is against our forum rules to own multiple accounts.

I AM racist towards the human race. I think we are dicks. I mean, really, really douchy dicks.
I think we are stupid idiots who seem incapable of harmoniously working towards a common goal on a global scale.

That being said, I think if there's any redeeming quality to human beings, it's that we can adapt and change.
We don't have to be utter morons forever.

.... Or so believes Gene Roddenberry.
We just gotta figure out what the hell happened to these dumb apes that we somehow achieved enlightment and formed the Federation.

A combination of post-scarcity and (obvious) common enemies?

Quote:

Originally Posted by willx

His points were (if I recall properly) basically: 1) Moral Progress exists 2) Science and Reason can take us there and 3) There can be such a thing as a "Moral Expert" (example: willx isn't a physicist. Therefore my opinion regarding string theory isn't relevent. So why is "everyone's" opinion about morality relevant)

I think the problem with getting a moral expert is that we lack the tool to measure the quality of a moral system. We still can't really predict the evolution of society based on such unquantifiables all that well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

Society is by no means a purely logical nor functional. It is based on humans which by themselves are not purely logical nor functional, nor is ethics and morality for that matter. Thus, moral of logic and science being "done correctly" is a crackpot idea that has no logical basis to it.

Individual humans don't have to be any more rational than geese for their behaviors to have patterns that can be studied scientifically.

Quote:

And how does experiments connect to ethics and morality?

In the end, everyone is engaged in sophism: The notion that only religion or "science" is the correct path of a ethical or moral society is in itself a fundamentally flawed idea which both sides are not willing to admit. Morality/ethics is a social construction which is based on what what society is, which cannot be purely religious or scientific. To argue that there is one correct path is simple BS.

While I must of course acknowledge the limits of science, what does religion bring to the table in terms of engineering morality? The wisdom of some long dead man's imaginary friend?

It's a useful lure for the believers. But it has little practical use in determining the morality of any issue.

.... Or so believes Gene Roddenberry.
We just gotta figure out what the hell happened to these dumb apes that we somehow achieved enlightment and formed the Federation.

In every version of the story I've heard, it was a mix of two things. First, the near destruction of humanity by all the other things we have been talking about. Basically a massive war or wars that result in the deaths of tens to hundreds of millions of people and serious decade long enviromental problems worldwide.

The second is contact with aliens (the "we are not alone" ideology).

It does not end the "humans are special" mentality, because the writers are only human.

The Federation level utopia Earth did not happen over-night even with Star Trek. It still took decades after First Contact to clean up the mess from the last World War or whatever conflict trashed the human race in the mid-21st century. It took a century for humans to be mentally ready to handle being in a near-utopia where human and alien technology has ended most of the planetary populations needs (food, shelter, and power) and ended a larger amount of the crime on the planet. It was still not over certain types of xenophobia and speciism. That took yet another century even after the formation of the Federation (a result of the alliance of species against the Romulans).

By Kirk's era, Earth is a utopia and humans have "gotten over" most things. Not everything, since our species is still emotionally charged and written by 20th century writers. They are only a few mentally unstable people left and they are on isolated mental correction planets awaiting medical treatments that will correct their heads and make them more or less normal again (Captain Garth for example was reportedly healed and returned to active duty in Star Fleet a few years after his incident with Kirk and crew).

Another century passes (Picard's era) and we've almost become preachy in our utopian Federationist ideals. Only a major Intragalactic war (Deep Space Nine's Dominion War) tones us back down to Kirk era ideals and stops the preachiness of the mid-24th century Federation.

In every version of the story I've heard, it was a mix of two things. First, the near destruction of humanity by all the other things we have been talking about. Basically a massive war or wars that result in the deaths of tens to hundreds of millions of people and serious decade long enviromental problems worldwide.

The second is contact with aliens (the "we are not alone" ideology).

It does not end the "humans are special" mentality, because the writers are only human.

The Federation level utopia Earth did not happen over-night even with Star Trek. It still took decades after First Contact to clean up the mess from the last World War or whatever conflict trashed the human race in the mid-21st century. It took a century for humans to be mentally ready to handle being in a near-utopia where human and alien technology has ended most of the planetary populations needs (food, shelter, and power) and ended a larger amount of the crime on the planet. It was still not over certain types of xenophobia and speciism. That took yet another century even after the formation of the Federation (a result of the alliance of species against the Romulans).

By Kirk's era, Earth is a utopia and humans have "gotten over" most things. Not everything, since our species is still emotionally charged and written by 20th century writers. They are only a few mentally unstable people left and they are on isolated mental correction planets awaiting medical treatments that will correct their heads and make them more or less normal again (Captain Garth for example was reportedly healed and returned to active duty in Star Fleet a few years after his incident with Kirk and crew).

Another century passes (Picard's era) and we've almost become preachy in our utopian Federationist ideals. Only a major Intragalactic war (Deep Space Nine's Dominion War) tones us back down to Kirk era ideals and stops the preachiness of the mid-24th century Federation.

Thanks resident Trekkie, but I was more or less humorously implying the mental conditions that sparked the enlightment, and how to emulate such miracle. Without killing ourselves with World Wars and waiting for some pointy-ear aliens to come scold us.

And not an actual Trek history lesson.

So like, my question was basically "what happened? (conditionally)" and not "what actually happened?" if that makes any sense.

EDIT: Btw, good read. I've always known vague details of Federation history, but nothing really put together in sum.

In every version of the story I've heard, it was a mix of two things. First, the near destruction of humanity by all the other things we have been talking about. Basically a massive war or wars that result in the deaths of tens to hundreds of millions of people and serious decade long enviromental problems worldwide.

The second is contact with aliens (the "we are not alone" ideology).

It does not end the "humans are special" mentality, because the writers are only human.

The Federation level utopia Earth did not happen over-night even with Star Trek. It still took decades after First Contact to clean up the mess from the last World War or whatever conflict trashed the human race in the mid-21st century. It took a century for humans to be mentally ready to handle being in a near-utopia where human and alien technology has ended most of the planetary populations needs (food, shelter, and power) and ended a larger amount of the crime on the planet. It was still not over certain types of xenophobia and speciism. That took yet another century even after the formation of the Federation (a result of the alliance of species against the Romulans).

By Kirk's era, Earth is a utopia and humans have "gotten over" most things. Not everything, since our species is still emotionally charged and written by 20th century writers. They are only a few mentally unstable people left and they are on isolated mental correction planets awaiting medical treatments that will correct their heads and make them more or less normal again (Captain Garth for example was reportedly healed and returned to active duty in Star Fleet a few years after his incident with Kirk and crew).

Another century passes (Picard's era) and we've almost become preachy in our utopian Federationist ideals. Only a major Intragalactic war (Deep Space Nine's Dominion War) tones us back down to Kirk era ideals and stops the preachiness of the mid-24th century Federation.

just my pov here but there is no enlightenment in ST. just that technology has advance to such that most people have just about everything they want. However as shown during the Dominion War, put enough stress on the Human race and all that crap comes oozing back out (Section 31 and the attempted Coup).

While I must of course acknowledge the limits of science, what does religion bring to the table in terms of engineering morality? The wisdom of some long dead man's imaginary friend?

It's a useful lure for the believers. But it has little practical use in determining the morality of any issue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

I'm basically saying that science is just about as useful and unbiased , if not less so, as religion in establishing an ethical/moral system.

...I think we're all missing a very big Athenian elephant here: philosophy. What is a philosopher if not the master purveyor of ideas and systems of morality?

Science itself imparts no particular moral value -- when scientific theories and facts are used to craft a system of morality, it's actually philosophical work that's being done, only that it would be a philosophy derived from empiricist principles. Likewise, any sufficiently developed religion's code of morality is often made up of a combination of three things: the instinctive impulse of social cooperation ("Golden Rule"), canon texts (mythology, history, and some ancient prophet's whims, er, divine revelations), and philosophical conclusions drawn from a priori certainties established by the religion's canon.

There's a reason "every" wiki article eventually links back to philosophy, you know.

Likewise, any sufficiently developed religion's code of morality is often made up of a combination of three things: the instinctive impulse of social cooperation ("Golden Rule"), canon texts (mythology, history, and some ancient prophet's whims, er, divine revelations), and philosophical conclusions drawn from a priori certainties established by the religion's canon.

Worth adding is those who report their experiences pertaining to what is known as mysticism.

Because the initial discussion(?) was the dissing of religion based on the logical path of science.

<looking back> Er.. It wasn't me was it? I don't think I did that.. The thread is awfully long.. I myself am a secular humanist myself and not a particular fan of religion but I don't recall being particularly heated in this discussion? I hope no one was offended by me linking to Sam Harris

EDIT: BTW, I just noticed this is now the second most "viewed" thread in the entire "General Chat" sub-forum!

Star Trek's faults are mainly that the backstory and speeches given by the likes of various Star Fleet Captains give an idea of a utopian Earth were we have overcome our problems via both enlightment and technology. However the story writers, being 20th century humans themselves, and needing to write a weekly television drama, tend to have the cast revert back to more known habits and ideals form time to time.

Usually they would reserve the bad human traits for the alien civilization of the week that would be mirroring a problem or vice common in either the 1960s or 1980s. The Federation would see this, maybe try to correct the problem, or at least get their own people out of the problem so they could leave by the end of the hour long episode. Sometimes they would point out that our species was not all that different from whatever alien they encounted that week...just we "got over it" at some point in the past. Sometimes because we nearly destroyed ourselves like this alien race was on the path to doing when the Enterprise arrived...or had already done, and we see the aftermath on what would happen if we contnue on our (20th century) path to destruction. Usually there was a reference to a Third World War that nearly destroyed our species and is sighted as the point we changed because to not become enlightened after that would result in our total destruction. When a war is so destructive that is effects the entire planet...on a personal level, it means something needs to change. This would be far more than what happened in World war II. This would be nuclear fallout effecting lives all over the planet and who knows where the missiles hit (most sources tend to think the exchange was in Central Asia and thus the majority dead would have been Chinese, Indian, Persian, Arabian, and perhaps even those in Southeast Asia....which would explain the general lack of those types of peoples seen in Star Fleet even by the 24th century. Massive depolulation and perhaps even mass nuclear sterlization?).

The early Next Generation period in the 1980s was particularly bad at being extremely preachy about the utopian ideas and how we have evolved past the needs and desires of our 20th century selves. Sometimes so preachy that you start to wonder if they are human at all. But things happen and they get returned to humanity by the time the Borg show up (Roddenberry's direct control was weakening).

By the time of Gene Roddenberry's death in the early 1990s, the writers were not as locked in on the utopia thing. Mainly because it got in the way of drama and storytelling. Deep Space Nine was noticably darker and much more dramatic in plotlines because it tended to erase the utopia from the humans and Federation. Introduce cracks in paradise. That under that clean exterior setup on Picard's Enterprise, humans were just as nasty and ugly as they had been in the 1990s. (Voyager was all over the place when it came to Earth's utopian ideals and never could settle on anything for long).

"Enterprise" shows the transitional humans. The ones that are more like us trying to become the "better selves" we would see in Kirk's time. They would struggle and fail at times, but they were more human (if sometimes more wooden in acting).

The new "Star Trek" hasn't really preached about the utopia at all (only one movie so far and it was busy with other stuff to worry about Federation ideals). No telling what, if any, message they will try to put forth in next year's "Star Trek2"

Can't remember the rest, but from the way they post most of them here are high-level professionals or expatriates with plenty of life and work experience in the various sectors. Most of us are sharing our personal experience and understanding based on what we have seen out there - the combined opinions from these discussions, most of the time I have seen within my 5 years here, are a whole lot more enlightening and sensible from what we hear from the masses out there.

The problem with society is cliquishness - usually people of the same kind of bread and circuses stay together. Given their strength in numbers from such consolidation, it is not surprising to hear silly stuff being expressed in the loudest volume. And they expect you to agree with them.

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

Can't remember the rest, but from the way they post most of them here are high-level professionals or expatriates with plenty of life and work experience in the various sectors. Most of us are sharing our personal experience and understanding based on what we have seen out there - the combined opinions from these discussions, most of the time I have seen within my 5 years here, are a whole lot more enlightening and sensible from what we hear from the masses out there.

The problem with society is cliquishness - usually people of the same kind of bread and circuses stay together. Given their strength in numbers from such consolidation, it is not surprising to hear silly stuff being expressed in the loudest volume. And they expect you to agree with them.

This is a good forum, for sure. So much anime/manga/light novel content for us 'J-fans' and a good general chat section, and these forums are well moderated and hardly anyone steps out of line here, despite the large amount of members.

Can't remember the rest, but from the way they post most of them here are high-level professionals or expatriates with plenty of life and work experience in the various sectors. Most of us are sharing our personal experience and understanding based on what we have seen out there - the combined opinions from these discussions, most of the time I have seen within my 5 years here, are a whole lot more enlightening and sensible from what we hear from the masses out there.

The problem with society is cliquishness - usually people of the same kind of bread and circuses stay together. Given their strength in numbers from such consolidation, it is not surprising to hear silly stuff being expressed in the loudest volume. And they expect you to agree with them.

Holy crap! I didn't even know that thread existed.. And the more I find out about the other people that frequent these forums the more impressed I am. What a wonderful community! It's a privilege to make all your acquaintances!